Kimi Raikkonen looked despondent during the post-race press conference following the Malaysian Grand Prix. Before the race weekend had even begun, Ferrari were questioning whether to change the 27 year-olds engine, following cooling issues toward the end of the Australian Grand Prix (described here). In the end the Italian team opted not to change his engine, but instead turned down the unit during qualifying and the race, leaving Kimi unable to fight for the victory.
“We needed to compromise something. It was not an ideal start to the weekend, we wanted to be on pole position but we couldn’t. It is still early in the season and we are in a good position. It is going to be close fighting in the next races but that is F1.”
“I think we knew the engine wasn’t 100% so we had to be on safe side, and there were things that were not perfect so we could not risk to do anything stupid. Hopefully next race we can get the car working 100% again like in the first race.”
Raikkonen was happy to salvage third from a difficult weekend, and expected their form, displayed at the Australian Grand Prix, to return in forthcoming races.
“I am happy to get some points, but disappointed how we ended up in the race. The whole weekend has been quite difficult we had to compromise too many things and lost too much speed, it was one of the weekends where we had to do what was needed to do to get the most points.”
“It wasn’t difficult to drive, but it was just not fast enough. We know the reasons why we were not quick this race, but unfortunately we were in the position where we could not do anything. Hopefully the next race we can turn the tables and fight for the win again.”
